Ortigia: The Ancient Island Inside Syracuse

Walk across the bridge to Ortigia and you walk across 2,700 years of history in thirty seconds. This small island — barely a kilometre long — is the original nucleus of Syracuse, one of the greatest cities of the ancient world. The Corinthian Greeks founded it in 734 BC and over the following centuries turned it into a metropolis that rivalled Athens in power and surpassed it in certain luxuries. Today the same streets still wind between Baroque churches and Norman palaces, past a spring that the ancient Greeks called sacred, toward a piazza where a perfectly intact Greek temple has been a Christian cathedral for over a thousand years.

The Tempio di Atena is the centrepiece of Ortigia's extraordinary Piazza del Duomo. Built in the 5th century BC to celebrate a Syracusan victory over the Carthaginians, it was one of the finest Doric temples in Sicily. When Sicily became Christian, the temple was not demolished — it was incorporated. The columns were left standing; the spaces between them were filled with walls; the entrance was reversed. You can still see the original Doric columns embedded in the walls of the current Baroque cathedral — Greek architecture wearing a Baroque facade like a disguise. It is one of the most remarkable architectural palimpsests in the world.

Ortigia was also the birthplace of Archimedes, the greatest mathematician and physicist of antiquity. It was here that he discovered the principle of displacement (the legendary 'Eureka!' moment in the bath), and here — according to tradition — that he used mirrors to set fire to Roman ships besieging the harbour. Whether or not the mirror story is true, Archimedes genuinely did devise catapults and war machines that kept the Roman general Marcellus at bay for two years. When Syracuse finally fell in 212 BC, a Roman soldier killed Archimedes in the street — apparently while he was drawing diagrams in the sand and refused to be interrupted.

The Fonte Aretusa — the Arethusa Spring — is one of Ortigia's most magical places. According to Greek mythology, the nymph Arethusa was fleeing the river god Alpheus, who desired her. She dived into the sea and swam underground beneath the Mediterranean, emerging as a freshwater spring on the island of Ortigia. The spring actually exists: it is a natural freshwater outlet at the sea's edge, home to papyrus plants (another Arab-era introduction to Sicily) and surrounded by ducks. The Syracusans considered it sacred and made offerings there for centuries. Today it is surrounded by a low wall and an iron fence, but the spring still flows, and the papyrus still grows, and the meeting of fresh water and sea water creates a slight shimmer in the light above the pool.

Ortigia's food market — the Mercato di Ortigia — is one of the finest in Sicily. It occupies a covered space near the Temple of Apollo and spills onto the surrounding streets: stalls piled with Sicilian blood oranges (tarocco and moro varieties, a deep crimson inside), swordfish steaks the thickness of a book, sea urchins cracked open on ice, ropes of dried oregano, pyramids of almonds, and Sicilian capers packed in salt. The market vendors shout in a mix of Sicilian dialect and Italian, and the atmosphere is precisely that combination of antiquity and exuberance that defines this extraordinary island. Spend at least an hour here before visiting the archaeological sites.